CRT? Nah, it's just history...

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” That’s the original pledge, written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy. (Under God was added in 1954.) Francis Bellamy was a Christian Socialist ousted from his Baptist ministry for insisting Jesus was a socialist. He believed the United States should be a worker’s paradise, where everyone had equal incomes. When it came to immigration and universal suffrage, though, his tune wavered. “Where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another,” he said, “every alien immigrant of inferior race may bring corruption to the stock. …there are other races, which we cannot assimilate without lowering our racial standard.” Go figure. But, hell, Bellamy was only mirroring what many folks thought about race at that time.

My paternal grandmother, a southern woman whom we called Mamaw, met good and bad news and off-hand remarks a bit coquettishly by dabbing her lips with a lace-fringed hanky pulled from under her sleeve. She’d then say, “Well, I do declare.” And that was pretty much all she’d say. She would occasionally opine on other things—her garden, the weather. And she’d mention black folk using the ugly word as easily as she talked about her peonies and red sallies. No one ever scolded Mamaw when she used that word. It wasn’t ugly at the time for a lot of folks. Indeed, the lexicon then reflected the personal and institutional biases of over ten American generations.

Slavery was dubbed “The Peculiar Institution” by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. He owned slaves. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Indeed, eight of the first twelve presidents owned slaves. Patric Henry owned slaves. Christopher Gadsen, who designed the “Don’t Tread on Me flag,” was a slaveholder. Nearly 50% of the 55 delegates to the Continental Congress owned slaves. Slavery was a peculiarly American institution.

History is a magnificent leveler, demanding we see both the good and the bad of it. If you ignore one or the other, you’re intellectually dishonest; your gaslight shines brightly. The American history I was taught as a child was almost exclusively good. When I got to college, I discovered, among other things, George Washinton did not have wooden teeth. I also realized Mamaw’s use of the ugly word was deeply embedded in our national psyche.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution are the “Reconstruction Amendments.” They abolished slavery, established rights and equal protection for all, and prohibited discrimination in voting. Good for us! Children should be taught that.

Reconstruction after the Civil War saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws not only in the south but the north. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court said a Louisiana statute requiring separate but equal accommodation in passenger rail cars was okey-dokey. The opinion said the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to political and civil rights (like voting and jury service), not “social rights” like sitting in the railroad car of your choice. It was absurd to believe, Justice Hanry Brown said, “…the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority.”

It took the Supremes fifty-eight years in Brown v. Board of Education to decide Jim Crow separate but equal institutionalized discrimination does indeed stamp the “colored race” with a badge of inferiority.

America’s military was institutionally segregated until 1948.

The Federal Housing Administration, created under FDR’s New Deal, advised in its manual that “incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities.” Thus, redlining became an institutionalized practice throughout the country. Indeed, in Chandler v. Ziegler (1930), the court held that restrictions against ownership or occupancy of land by negroes in certain districts did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. That case occurred in Jefferson County, Colorado.

Under the guise of election integrity, institutionalized racial discrimination, particularly in states with large minority communities, is having a revitalized heyday in American states to this very day. And, children should be taught the insidiousness of that.

Critical Race Theory? My professors at the University of Colorado—surely a cesspool of liberalism—didn’t teach CRT. Maybe they’d never heard of it. I first heard about it from Trumplicans, though their hair on fire bastardized version is intellectually dishonest. CRT is a dry and esoteric set of ideas debated in obscure academic journals. It simply attempts to explain the effect of institutionalized racial bias extant in our history.

We live in a great country, a once robust but now fragile democracy beholding to the principles of a republic. For as youthful as we are, we have accomplished a great deal. As we recite the pledge, we ought to remember our history. The good and the bad of it.

GeorgeM wrote: Critical Race Theory? My professors at the University of Colorado—surely a cesspool of liberalism—didn’t teach CRT. Maybe they’d never heard of it. I first heard about it from Trumplicans, though their hair on fire bastardized version is intellectually dishonest. CRT is a dry and esoteric set of ideas debated in obscure academic journals. It simply attempts to explain the effect of institutionalized racial bias extant in our history.

If it was taught by machines that might be true, but it's being taught by people that bring their own biases to the show. Similar to the bolded references above.

George M.

When did you matriculate at CU, can I assume the Boulder campus? Also what was your major? I ask the latter because students in the STEM disciplines would have to elect courses where CRT would be taught.
Regarding muy first question, CRT is considered to have its origins in the 1980's.
While there is no definitive birth date to the movement, according to Kimberle W. Crenshaw (cited in Lawrence et al. 1993, p. 4) CRT’s social origins lay in a student boycott and alternative course organized at the Harvard Law School in 1981.
It may be that you like myself went through college some time earlier.

You're a good writer George. While I appreciate your well thought out post, I have to disagree with the premise the CRT isn't taught in schools. I don't understand how you could possibly know that CRT is only taught in some colleges. I tend to believe angry parents across the country who only recently discovered what their children were learning because of the school lockdowns. If you only get your information from left wing sources, it makes sense that you haven't gotten the same information as I have.

What you can't dispute is the fairly new term of "white privilege" which is a key component of CRT. Do you believe white privilege is a current reality that is engrained in our society and must be confronted and eliminated? If you do, please give some examples and we can talk about them.

There's a lot more CRT concepts I'd like to talk about but lets just start with one and see where it goes.

On a related note, I ran across this article which gave me a chuckle. If you don't know who Ibram X Kendi is, you should research him a bit for a better perspective.

‘Shot Himself In The Foot’: Ibram X. Kendi Posts, Then Deletes Tweet That Accidentally Refutes CRT

Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi — a leading proponent of Critical Race Theory (CRT) — posted and later deleted a tweet that accidentally refuted the entire left-wing ideology.

On Friday evening, Kendi shared an article from The Hill noting that many white students applying to college falsely claim that they belong to racial minority groups — specifically, “to improve their chances of getting accepted” or “get minority-focused financial aid.”

Kendi explained: “More than a third of White students lied about their race on college applications, and about half of these applicants lied about being Native American. More than three-fourths of these students who lied about their race were accepted.”

So he basically just admitted that the white students really don't have a privilege when it comes to being accepted into colleges, in fact it's just to opposite, they are discriminated against (I would include Asians students who have it even worse).

Once he realized what he was saying...

Kendi quietly deleted his tweet. “Cynical Theories” author James Lindsay, however, observed: “Kendi admits it’s not actually a privilege to be White in America?”

www.dailywire.com/news/shot-himself-in-t...dentally-refutes-crt

GeorgeM are you this George?

www.theflume.com/opinion/article_2595a1f...81-bff4680cf7d1.html

Independent Perspective
By George Seaton Contributor Oct 21, 2021 Updated Oct 21, 2021 0
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” That’s the original pledge, written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy. (Under God was added in 1954.) Francis Bellamy was a Christian Socialist ousted from his Baptist ministry for insisting Jesus was a socialist. He believed the United States should be a worker’s paradise, where everyone had equal incomes. When it came to immigration and universal suffrage, though, his tune wavered. “Where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another,” he said, “

thefederalist.com/2021/07/12/leftists-sh...ses-their-hypocrisy/


"Given this trend, our culture’s self-important panjandrums first sought to pull the wool over our eyes. “You’ve all misunderstood CRT,” they have told us. “CRT is an obscure thing not present in American schools,” they have pronounced. “Conservative critiques of CRT reflect chicken-little demagoguery and polemical manipulation,” they have warned.

Such assertions were so unconvincing— and so obviously driven by political calculation — that CRT advocates have shifted to claiming CRT is the “real history.” The irony and hypocrisy would be more risible if it wasn’t our children’s education and our nation’s future that are on the line."

with the lack of PEOPLE OF COLOR on this board, I find it absurd that there can be any REAL dialogue on
this subject....come back when u find some,THEN we will really have a FULL and authentic discussion.

Thank you for the comments. Interestingly, but not unexpected, the comments focused on the hot button, CRT, and not the essential point of the piece, American history. Not surprising, too, was the mention of Ibram X. Kendi (Henry Rogers), Tucker Carlson’s cause celebre.

Serious studies of history cannot be done without looking at cause and effect. Generations forward will look back at our present, and historians will surely study what may be called the Trump Era. A component of their study will focus on Critical Race Theory. Whether you believe CRT is valid or not, competent historians will not be able to provide an overview of it without, as I attempted to do, recapitulating the historical record of slavery in America, Jim Crow, de jure, and de facto segregation, unabashed racism, racial gerrymandering, redlining, and a host of other institutionalized efforts to deny the promise of the Constitution to black folk. (You do know the right to vote regardless of race guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment was not granted to Indigenous peoples until 1924? Women didn’t get the vote until 1920. The universal right to vote was not included in the original Constitution because, as a matter of fact, most of the Founders didn’t believe in universal suffrage.)

I think folks see education from basically two viewpoints, especially in the study of history. Some get an education; others take an education. Getting an education assumes passive engagement, a kind of robotic data in, data out kind of thing. I believe taking an education demands grasping all the information you can get your hands on and evaluating the evidence of its credibility. It’s only then when you can be intellectually honest about accepting or rejecting it. And, no, relying on mass media and social networking does not an education make.

I think it's a parent's responsibility to ensure their children take an education.

Again, thank you for your comments.

And, yes, my original post was a repost of my Flume "Independent Perspective."

I went to school before CRT. Did I learn about the "Trail of Tears"? Yes. How about the first slaves coming to Jamestown? Learned that too. Did I learn that race riots in the 1900's were when whites went to minority neighborhoods and burned them down. I learned that New Yorkers opposed to the Civil War draft targeted African Americans in the city.

And this was in Catholic schools. Where I learned the KKK also targeted Jews and Catholics in addition to African-Americans.

But did I learn that as a white person I was automatically an oppressor? No. I was taught that I have free will and wasn't responsible for the crimes of my ancestors.

Excellent. Me, too, Fred. And, no, I didn't and don't participate in the oppression. The oppression was nevertheless there. If it's absurd to believe you personally were/are an oppressor, then it's equally absurd to believe the oppression (of anyone, black, brown, Jew, gay, etc.) does not have consequences to this day.